


a list of future possibilities

by plotdevice



Category: THE9 (Band), 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV), 青春有你2
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Gender Non-Conforming Character, Jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25058203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plotdevice/pseuds/plotdevice
Summary: It wasn't An Qi's fault that she was loud, but it was her fault that she was a gossip; at least, that was how Yuxin felt when she was about to enter the practice room and heard her say, voice carrying as well as it always did, "So whatwasit like before?"
Relationships: Kong Xue'er/Liu Yuxin
Comments: 5
Kudos: 41





	a list of future possibilities

**Author's Note:**

> content notes: some oblique references to bad experiences with men in the 2nd section. very vague, nothing explicit. i think that's it, but let me know if anything else needs to be tagged.
> 
> title slightly bastardised from the chen chen poem: [when i grow up i want to be a list of further possibilities](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/143241/when-i-grow-up-i-want-to-be-a-list-of-further-possibilities)

1\. 

It didn't matter that she was wearing the blue uniform shirt of her rank; when Yuxin came out of the bathroom stall, the woman standing at the sink stiffened, her shoulders drawing up and in before she took in the nametag on Yuxin's shirt. Only as she approached did the woman's eyes search her face from the mirror, offering her a smile as wordless apology while she finished washing her hands, shaking them to dry them off. Yuxin smiled back. In her head she was running through everything there was left to worry about, cataloguing it in order: that Zhuoyi was still off beat; that Shujun wasn't eating out of stress; that Xiaowei often broke off from the group and went to the balcony in tears. Those thoughts twisted her head around, caused her to stumble in a daze out of the bathroom, wincing at the pressure on her knee. 

It was why, outside, when she was accosted by Yu Shuxin, whose face was twisted with concern, it took her a moment to understand. 

"Can you go talk to her?" Shuxin said immediately, none of her usual niceties at play. "She's really--no one can--" The words tumbled out of her one after the other. Yuxin was shaken out of her daze, but there was only one _her_ it could be, coming from this person, so she set off, striding down the long hallway, its fluorescent lights casting her pale shadow in front of her.

She didn't have to travel very far--only around the first corner--when she encountered Kong Xueer, sitting against a wall with her face twisted and silent tears streaming down her cheeks. Shuxin, who was hot on her heels, said in a rushed breath, "Lisa laoshi told her that she wasn't doing good enough and she hasn't really been eating very well lately and in the dorm she couldn't sleep all night and just now she fell and she said she didn't hurt herself but we don't know if that's really true and she doesn't even want any of us to talk to her but I brought you anyway!" Her speech delivered, she fled somewhere else, presumably to give them a semblance of privacy. Xueer's face crumpled up, and she started sobbing outright, face turning red more likely from the humiliation of it than the emotion. Yuxin stood still for a second, and then she squatted down, ignoring the creak in her knees. From her back, she felt more than heard someone coming down the hallway; Xueer's head jerked up, and the look of desperation and panic on her face indicated it was a camera.

"You can't do anything about it," Yuxin said. She kept her voice low. "Just let yourself feel how you feel." It felt unfair to say because they both knew what was not being said. This vantage point was strange too: to be so close to Xueer and yet apart from her entirely, to see her hiding her face in her hands. There had been a time when Yuxin would have put an arm around her, to comfort her, and there had been a time too when they had been on cameras like this together, in hallways without such bright, exposing light, where all their mistakes and all their ugliness could be hidden a little better. 

Now she stayed apart, and their only point of contact was where the harsh hallway light pushed their shadows together. 

"In front of you?" Xueer was still crying, so hard that it seemed to be hard for her to breathe in between the sobs. Another unfairness: she couldn't be mad at Shuxin for putting her in this position, but Yuxin resented it nonetheless. Xueer was too self-conscious for Yuxin to help her; she hid it well from her dormmates, whom she wanted to impress, but Yuxin knew better. Their past was spread thin between them, cobwebs that Xueer would not brush away out of pride.

"Not just in front of me." It was a reminder that the camera was still behind them, and just a few metres ahead were more practice rooms, with other contestants milling in and out. Xueer had to know all of that too.

By this time she had managed to calm herself down a little, though her face was red and she was turning into the wall to hide it. Then another round of tears burst out of her. "I just can't dance." Yuxin was about to say something, but she was cut off by Xueer sobbing again. "Even though it's what I'm good at! I just can't do it right." The words were punctuated with sharp intakes of breath, like she was trying to force them out and stop the tears. She could have said this to anyone. Why did she send the others away?

Yuxin watched her, unsure of what to say. "Do you want--" She paused. Xueer didn't say anything. The camera stayed trained on her face, though she was still turned to the wall. "You can do it," she said at last. It felt inadequate under the circumstances, but it was also the only thing she knew how to say to Xueer. Sometimes other trainees came to her seeking advice, and with them it was easy. With Xueer it was like all the words fled her mouth and all that remained were platitudes, cliches, tired out phrases that held no weight. She said them anyway. "We both know you can." 

Xueer shook her head. The tears came for a time longer, and then slowed and stopped, though her body still trembled and she was still taking deep, long breaths to calm herself. She did this for a few more seconds as Yuxin watched; then she took in a final breath, slow and long, and held it until the fine tremors running through her came to an end. She stood up, and as she rose, the outline of her shadow on the ground grew weaker and lighter. Yuxin watched it for a moment before she looked up at Xueer, who said, voice still wobbly, "Thank you," and inclined her head. 

It was a dismissal, so Yuxin took it as one. She stood, wincing as her knees complained, and nodded at Xueer, who had already turned to walk away. There was no elaboration; Yuxin had not expected it. Turning to her right, she made eye contact with the cameraperson. Then she too left.

2\. 

Xueer ignored her all the way home. The other Ladybees members were teasing her and laughing, but she was clearly still upset, the pink moue of her mouth turned down like it was whenever someone pushed her too hard. She was, Yuxin thought, sensitive about the most confusing things; even now, running through the interview again, she couldn't pick apart what exactly she had said that crossed the line. Not when Xueer had been saying the same kinds of things in return. Sequestered as she was in the back, she could see the flash of a phone screen in Xueer's hands, bright even through the curtain fall of her hair; lately it felt like that thing had been attached to her too. It brought back what she had been thinking about this entire time: Xueer had layers. Maybe it was easier for her to pretend that she didn't, that she put everything on the surface, but it made it harder for everyone else to get along. 

When the van lurched to a stop outside their dorm, Xueer was the first to get out; she made sure to close the door in Yuxin's face before she could reach an arm to stop the handle. Heqi sent her a startled, questioning glance when she opened it again and stepped out, and Yuxin shook her head. Why aggravate anything?

When she was inside she opened the door to Xueer's room; the first thing she saw were Xueer's socked feet, then her legs splayed out across the bed, leading up to the fall of her hair across her back. She understood: Xueer was sulking.

This was confirmed a moment later when Xueer said, the usual petulant quality of her voice intensified, "I don't want to talk to you." 

"You didn't even know it was me," Yuxin said. As it always was, she was torn between amusement and irritation. Amusement at being subject to Xueer's whims, her mercurial moods, the whirlwinds that came and went so fast that no one in the band had time to process or understand them; irritation at the same, that she had spent this long and worked this hard to be a glorified therapist to a girl who thought coming from Korea and training under JYP meant she knew better than all of them and acted like it too. And as it always was, amusement won out: she sat at the edge of the bed, feeling the mattress dip under her, and said, "So who are you talking to now?" 

That golden-brown head whipped around, the long tresses flying from one side to another, and Xueer glared at her. Even from here Yuxin could see the big eyes, the full lips, the planes of a face that drew in to a sweet point. Sometimes looking at Xueer was like looking into a mirror, an uncanny valley alternate universe where Yuxin could torture herself with hypotheticals: what if she went to Korea instead of Beijing, what if she grew her hair out instead of cutting it short, what if her mother thought she was beautiful and approved of what she was doing? But to look too long was to fall into self pity, so she turned her gaze away, down where she was plucking at the bedspread. Next to Xueer's pale legs, her hands looked tanned and very masculine. Afternoon sunlight glinted bright off her rings.

"I'm not _talking_ to anyone," Xueer said, but the furious blush on her cheeks gave her away. Yuxin raised an eyebrow, and after a second Xueer turned herself, sitting up and settling against the headboard, her phone screen still hidden, to talk more comfortably. "I'm _not_ talking to anyone!" she said again.

"Okay." Very mild. Pushing Xueer too hard made her close off.

"I'm _not_ ," Xueer said one more time, and then, realising Yuxin wasn't going to let her get away with it, stopped talking and crossed her arms across her chest. Yuxin didn't say anything for a moment; she wasn't sure how she wanted to approach it. Xueer saved her the trouble by getting straight to it: "Anyway, it doesn't matter because he isn't even _here_ right now." 

"Oh." 

"We're just _talking_." Maybe she could hear how whiny she was beginning to sound because she stopped to compose herself. "We're just talking! Like you never talked to a boy?"

"Um." Unwillingly, the same way it happened whenever someone brought up men in the context of her life, she remembered in her body what she didn't want to remember, and had to tense herself against it.

Xueer didn't notice. "I know it can't happen." Her voice softened, her tone confiding. Had she moved past her anger? Her big eyes were bright and warm now. "He's busy too, you know. He's not even here right now." _Here_ must have meant in the city, which made Yuxin feel worse. If he were in entertainment too... "But it's nice to have someone to talk to. Like, it just feels..." She broke off, blushing, and nudged Yuxin's thigh with her socked foot. "Don't you know?"

The words awoke again, in her body, the unsettling familiar sensation of trying to step over slippery rocks. Things she wanted to forget, things she wanted to protect herself from: curl up inside herself, let the smirking idol she'd created do the talking, not that naive adolescent girl who got fooled one too many times. "Not really." The words dragged themselves out of her.

Xueer, caught up in her own emotion, didn't notice. Then she did. She said: "Oh." A flat statement; not unkind but awkward in its acknowledgment. It hung in the air, caught between the rays of sunlight that streamed bright into Xueer's room, pooling in front of her crossed legs on the bedspread. Then: "Not even--" She caught herself before the sentence ended, and Yuxin's head turned to see what she might have meant. It was unusual for Xueer to stop herself. Her normally placid face was twisted in confusion. "Is it because--um..." She paused, reconsidered her words for a moment. Finally she settled on: "Never?"

Yuxin didn't even shake her head. Instead she looked down at her fingers, and then through them, to the floor beneath her feet. With her head bent, she could feel the hair falling in front of her eyes despite all the gel meant to hold it up, the skin stretching across the vertebrae in her neck and back. The persistent tightness in her shoulders. Explaining the mottled patchwork of her past experiences seemed humiliating, insurmountable. Even beyond those things from her adolescence from which her mind shied away, she'd never felt anything like what Xueer meant. Yuxin had no contact highs, no mounting excitement, no one who'd ever glued her to her phone. Just confusion, and later, in its place, a resignation that ran her into the ground. 

And what could Xueer know, anyway, about what she'd done: about giving and not receiving in turn? Even when the giving had been its own gift, she remembered too well the sting of shame that accompanied the rejection. She didn't want to reply. She let the moment stretch on.

Xueer took her silence as acquiescence. The bed creaked and tilted down as she made her way to sit next to Yuxin, mirroring her position on the edge of the bed. "It's okay," she said. A pale hand landed on Yuxin's knee, patting it. Even that was awkward--clearly Kong Xueer didn't often find herself in the position of giving comfort to others. It was an unkind thought, so Yuxin let it land for a brief moment and then breathed it out, brushing it away. 

"I know it's okay. I'm not worried about it." She imbued her words with a bit of humour, a lightness she knew Xueer would find familiar. 

Xueer didn't smile the way Yuxin thought she would. Instead she studied Yuxin's face with a gravity that was unlike her. "Really, never?" she said again. The sunlight struck her hair, turning her golden and illuminating her dark eyes into warmth. Her hand was still on Yuxin's knee, and Yuxin could feel through the material of her track pants the prick of her long nails. It was this that pushed her into moving back, putting distance between them.

"I told you, I'm not worried about it." She smiled to soften her tone. "I'm more worried about what this situation is." She nodded at the phone near Xueer's pillow. Xueer opened her mouth to protest and Yuxin cut her off: "It doesn't really matter if it is or isn't anything or if he is or isn't in the country. But--" A deep breath did nothing to relieve the tightness in her chest. "It's--you--we've worked hard. So if anything happens, I don't want it to fall on you." 

Xueer's full mouth pulled into a pout. She didn't say anything; her eyes darted down and away. 

"If you need attention," Yuxin said, gentling her voice, "you should just come to one of us. Come to me, I'll give you all the attention you want." She poked Xueer's cheek; as expected, it pulled her into a reluctant smile.

3\. 

It wasn't An Qi's fault that she was loud, but it was her fault that she was a gossip; at least, that was how Yuxin felt when she was about to enter the practice room and heard her say, voice carrying as well as it always did, "So what _was_ it like before?" They were only on the second day of practice out of three, but around here, the compressed timelines meant everyone worked fast, and An Qi had maybe been anticipating this longer than either Yuxin or Xueer themselves. 

Even despite knowing better she stopped herself and stood at the door, hoping the weak lights wouldn't push her shadow into the room, wondering if any more was forthcoming. She could hear Xueer's voice--her long vowels, the soft hills and valleys of her intonation--but she couldn't catch what Xueer said. 

An Qi again: "But you're so awkward now! She still won't even touch you--" She broke off into giggles, maybe demonstrating what she meant. 

Yuxin already knew. It'd caused some unexpected friction when they reviewed the practice tape for the first time and Fu Yaning, sweetly oblivious to the tension in the room, said, "Yuxin, you're not touching Xueer at all in this part!" She'd wondered, up till then, whether Xueer had noticed, whether she was aware that it had been a conscious decision on Yuxin's part; Xueer's startled, furtive glance towards her made it clear. 

So they'd continued on like that. The hours passed like days in Xueer's presence, a syrupy agony, a death by honey and a thousand cuts, particularly humiliating because she knew she would look back and regret whatever appeared on camera. It was hard to control her face when Xueer was around; she reverted to the Ladybees' Liu Yuxin, the girl who teased her groupmates and blushed when asked about her bra size on camera. A person she hadn't been for a long time, an ill-fitting practise costume that the producers were probably thrilled to edit her into just for some comic relief. Everything she worked against. 

She only stood at the door for a moment longer before her face burned. How shameful, to stand and eavesdrop like she was fifteen again, wondering whether the raucous laughter from the boys in the room around the corner was about her. Without opening the door she walked herself down the blank halls to the balcony, where the wind whipped her hair into her eyes. She stood staring out at the skyline until footsteps sounded in her hearing.

"Oh, so you are here." That was Xueer's voice.

Without turning--Xueer had already reached her side and was mirroring her pose, elbows on the railing and staring out at the view--Yuxin said, "I didn't mean to be gone long." 

"It wasn't so long. It's okay. An Qi said maybe your knee hurt so you went to find an ice pack, but I thought you might be here." 

It did hurt, but that went without saying. "How are yours?" Xueer had started wearing the knee supports just a few days ago. Sometimes she asked Yuxin to make sure the straps were secured. 

A pause. "Fine." 

This stilted conversation. It was hard not to compare it to before. From this height, even with the haze in the air, she could make out the distant outlines of the roller coasters at the fairgrounds. The sky was more blue than it had been in a long time. At her side, Xueer sighed, a light sound. The two of them stood in silence for another beat. 

It was eerie, sometimes, how quiet it could be up here. She felt like she'd spent so much of her life closer to the ground: in studios, in basements, on streets busking for practice, clasped in the throng of humanity, trying to prove herself in the grit and dirt of real life. Here everything was sanitised: the halls an even beige, the rooms a pale, unmarred blue. It didn't matter how high she could rank; in some way she thought she would always be the girl in the basement surrounded by men who wanted to see what she could do just to tell her they could do it better. That girl had beat them, but the competition was different now.

"Are you going to come back soon?" Xueer asked at last, breaking her reverie. "Should I tell them you need more time?" 

"I need..." Yuxin's voice trailed off. Her mind, which had been blank for a few blissful seconds, tried to kick itself into gear. She shook her head. "I'll come. I'm coming." 

"It's fine if you need to stay," Xueer said. Yuxin looked over at her for the first time; the corner of her mouth was ticked up in a smile, her hair limned by the sun, blowing out wildly in the wind. "Leader privileges. I can have them practice without you. We don't need you for everything, Liu-laoshi." It was the first time Xueer had called her that. 

Leader privileges. "You're a good leader." The words came out before she knew she was saying them. She must have looked surprised--she could feel it in the way her eyebrows were raised--and smoothed her face out. Again Xueer's presence made her react in ways she didn't understand. But Xueer's expression mirrored hers; her mouth had fallen open slightly, and her eyes were wide. Since she'd already said it: "You are. You're good. I'm sorry for--I shouldn't have sounded so surprised. Before. You've become--you're good." Even when she chose the words as carefully as she could, they sounded flat. But this was all she could offer.

Xueer looked surprised for a moment longer. "You don't need to say that. To make me feel better... you didn't need to."

"I know." Yuxin broke eye contact to look at the way her hands curled around the balcony rails. Her rings clinked against the metal. "I wasn't just saying it. I thought..." She didn't finish the sentence. What had she thought, anyway, that Xueer didn't already know? 

Xueer didn't say anything in reply. When Yuxin snuck a glance to her left, she saw Xueer's face, Xueer's eyes withdrawn in thought, pensive. She started: "I think--" and then cut herself off again. Her face turned skyward, beseeching. Then she said, "It's just been hard. It's been..." She blew out a breath. "Harder than I thought."

Yuxin remembered: the beige hallway, the cameras, the tears. "Yeah."

"And having you here, too. Do you ever think about--" Xueer's mouth twisted. "We're doing this again."

"Yes." So low it almost wasn't audible. Yuxin turned her face away, studied her hands.

"But at the same time..." Xueer sighed out another breath. Her hands were white and slender. Her fingernails, which were today painted a pale pink, tapped against the railing. "I don't know. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm glad you're here." 

That was a surprise, and yet it wasn't at all. Yuxin let the words settle on her, blanket her in buttery golden light. "For me, I think," she said, testing the words out slowly, "if I had to do this with someone again, I'm also glad that it was you." _Even despite everything_ , she didn't say.

Their eyes met. Xueer smiled, her eyes creasing at the corners. She said, "I'll tell everyone else you need some more time." Yuxin didn't watch her go; she heard the balcony door swing and then click closed.

Far below she could see a truck arrive with the latest yogurt shipment. In a few minutes she would have to go back to the windowless rooms where she had spent 90% of the past five months, where Xueer would squint at the practice tapes and say _we're out of sync here!_ and make them practice again while An Qi giggled the entire time, where she could sit at a table with Xiai and be teased about her stiff back. For now, she closed her eyes and let the wind blow through her hair, the warm sun caressing her face.

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know whether this fic really makes any sense! if i started w/the notes here i'd never finish them so you can see some notes and references [here](https://monopoli.dreamwidth.org/21897.html#cutid1). also a deleted scene that didnt rly fit into the fic [here](https://monopoli.dreamwidth.org/21897.html#cutid2) (both located @ my dreamwidth).
> 
> comments and thoughts r very appreciated as always~ thank u for reading!


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